Diana Mirkin: Hi, I am Diana Mirkin and we are talking about controlling blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes with lifestyle changes. We have talked a lot about the food that you will eat when you are changing your life style, but I want doubly emphasize exercise. It's so important you can't just make these lifestyle changes with diet alone. You really have to move more and here is why. When your muscles are empty, when they don't have any sugar in them and you eat, the sugar goes directly into your muscles, it does not go into your blood stream and stay there to cause the high rise in blood sugar that does the damage in diabetes so that causes your blood pressure to rise. When you exercise and your muscles are empty they suck up that sugar and it's just such an important mechanism every diabetic should be exercising. The other reason that exercise is so important is because muscles burn more calories than fat. Anything you can do to build up your muscles will make it easier for you to burn the calories that you need to keep in balance. You want to be able to eat enough food to meet all your nutritional needs, but you have to burn more calories than you take in when you are trying to control your blood pressure, your cholesterol or diabetes. That's why any exercise program that helps you to build muscle, whether it's a strength training program or an aerobic activity such as cycling or running that's building the muscles by moving you around against gravity. Any exercise program at all that you enjoy and that you will do consistently for the rest of your life will help you to fight these diseases of western civilization.

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